Canada Criminalizes God’s Truth on Sex and Gender

Canada criminalizes God's truth on sex and gender. That is a topic we'll discuss today right here on the Christian Worldview radio program where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. I'm David Wheaton, the host, and our website is thechristianworldview.org.

Thank you for joining us today and also thank you to our national sponsor, Samaritan Ministries International, who provide a biblical solution to health care as a community of Christians pays one another's medical bills. You can find out more at thechristianworldview.org. When Daniel and his friends faced King Nebuchadnezzar's ultimatum that they fall down and worship the king's golden idol or be thrown into a blazing furnace, this was their reply. O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire, and He will deliver us out of your hand, O King.

But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O King, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up. With the recent passage of Bill C-4 in Canada banning so-called conversion therapy, defined as, quote, a practice, treatment, or service designed to change a person's sexual orientation to heterosexual, unquote, pastors and Christians there now face a similar choice to obey government or God, who is mighty to save all who live in sexual rebellion against His design. This weekend on the Christian Real View, Canadian pastor Andrew DiBartolo joins us to describe the situation and to call American pastors to stand in solidarity by preaching on biblical sexual morality on Sunday, January 16th. Let's get straight to the interview with pastor Andrew DiBartolo. Andrew, thank you for coming on the program.

Introduce yourself to the audience. How did you come to Saving Faith? What do you do now? Tell us about your involvement with Religious Freedom in Canada with the Liberty Coalition. Thanks, David, and thanks for having me on and thanks for shining a light on what's going on here in Canada.

It is much appreciated by the brothers north of the border. A little bit about me. I didn't grow up in a Christian home. I got connected to a youth group and to my church through an outreach ball hockey league that they ran. And as a result of getting connected, I learned about what it means to worship and follow Christ. When I was about 16, the Lord saved me, gave me a new heart, made me love Him.

Fast forward a little bit. My wife and I got married. We ended up moving from Toronto to Kingston and we started a church here. So I pastor a church in Kingston. It's been about six years now, and there were a number of Canadian pastors and Canadian churches over the last two years that remained open and restriction free. And as I began to get connected with these men, we began to see similarities in our understanding of the sovereignty of Christ, our understanding of the civil government overreach, and we connected together. In January of 2021, the Liberty Coalition was formed. I wasn't a part of the work back then, but they formed as being not just an alternative to the only kind of media we had here, but working with churches, working with business owners, working with retired police officers, with doctors and medical professionals to fight for liberties here in Canada from a distinctly Christian perspective and a distinctly biblical worldview. And so just a few months ago, I came on with the Liberty Coalition as the project manager for the Church Must Gather initiative, which has specifically been working with churches across the country who have been open and restriction free, finding churches who may be meeting them quietly and wanting to kind of bring them into this network together and encouraging them. And more recently, with the passing of Bill C-4, the initiative that we have begun in order to shine a light on what's going on, but also proclaim the total sovereignty of Christ over his church, God's design for marriage and sexuality. And so my involvement with the Liberty Coalition has been recent, but my connection with men across the country who have been saying the same sorts of things about the church and about the state, really that's been going on since the COVID issue began about two years ago. I want to read, Andrew, a letter that you personally sent to Pastor John MacArthur here in America, trying to urge him to make known what has taken place in Canada over the last month.

And we'll get into maybe a little later the church lockdown issue that was very severe or has been very severe in Canada over COVID. But you write to John MacArthur, you say, Pastor John, Bill C-4 passed through the House and the Senate without opposition. This is in Canada.

Not a single dissenting vote was cast by any member of the Conservative Party. It received royal assent on December 8th, that'd be 2021, which means it will come into law after January 8th, 2022. So it's in law now. The bill will amend the Criminal Code in Canada to ban conversion therapy.

It will criminalize, among other things, quote, causing another person to undergo conversion therapy, promoting or advertising conversion therapy, unquote. That's from the bill. Next paragraph. In the preamble of the bill, it says that the belief that, quote, heterosexuality, cisgender gender identity, that's identifying with the gender you were born with, and gender expression that conforms to the sex assigned to a person at birth are to be preferred over other sexual orientations, gender identities and gender expressions is a myth. According to Canadian law, as of January 8th, 2022, the belief in God's design for marriage and sexuality will now be seen as a myth.

Last paragraph. The bill defines conversion therapy as, quote, a practice, treatment or service designed to change a person's sexual orientation to heterosexual, to change a person's gender identity to cisgender, to change a person's gender expression so that it conforms to the sex assigned to the person at birth, to repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behavior, to repress a person's non-cisgender gender identity or repress or reduce a person's gender expression that does not conform to the sex assigned to the person at birth. And you write, this definition is intentionally broad, and it can clearly be used against any preacher or elder who either speaks against homosexuality, transgenderism, or who counsels a person to obey Christ and abandon their homosexual transgender actions and lifestyle. This means, as of January 8th, 2022, it will be against the law to preach, teach or counsel regarding God's design for marriage and sexuality. And then you close your letter to John MacArthur by saying this, quote, everyone who knowingly causes another person to undergo conversion therapy, you're quoting from the bill, is guilty of an indictable offense and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than five years. On January 16th, 2022, and this is why we brought you on the program today, faithful men across this country and many in the United States as well will be preaching on God's design for marriage and a biblical ethic of sexuality. We will be doing so illegally, declaring to the state that there is one God and one Lord over his church, and that Christ alone gets to both define marriage and dictate what is required in the pulpit. We are honored that our American brothers will be joining us in this. Yours in Christ, Andrew DiBartolo from Encounter Church.

Now, Andrew, that was an excellent letter. You said a lot there, but maybe tell us a bit more about this law and how you would respond to the person who says, well, this law is only meant to stop that kind of abusive conversion therapy that has nothing to do with preaching or counseling someone. Well, the first thing I would say would be if that's the case, then they should have explicitly mentioned it in the bill. So the bill doesn't say anything about, for example, electroshock therapy or denial therapy like starving people.

They're putting them in very extreme physical circumstances. The bill doesn't mention that. If it did mention that and it was limited to only that, well, then I'd have no problem with it because I abhor those practices as well and no one should be in favor of them. But the bill is vague and I believe it's intentionally vague and it's really – I mean even as you read it, that's a non-definition. It just says practice, treatment or service. What does that mean?

What does that look like? And so I think that it being vague serves the purpose that it acts as a big bucket to be able to catch whatever it wants to. And so I think people who would say, no, no, no, this is just that abusive kind of conversion therapy. First of all, there's no evidence of that being practiced anywhere in Canada and not for a long time. Like this isn't something that's supported by churches, by really any group and there's no history of it, again, within the last while of any of that happening. So people who would say that, they would say this isn't about preaching or counseling.

I don't know if they've read the bill carefully enough or I think they're being disingenuous or perhaps they're giving our civil government much more credit and a wider margin than they should. I mean you read from the actual bill, those portions that I quoted for Pastor MacArthur and yeah, any practice or treatment or service where you basically say to someone, don't pursue this kind of lifestyle. So if you're a man and you feel that you're a woman but you're a man physically, to say to that person you're a man, act like a man, pursue that, that's normal for you to be a man if you're physically a man. That would be conversion therapy because what is that? That is a practice. It is a treatment.

It's a service. It's telling the person pursue this as opposed to this. And so obviously it is going to work its way into churches and in private settings because part of the, not only the gospel proclamation is to call people to repent from their sin and to Christ to leave the spiritual death and darkness and come into the light and be in the light as he's in the light, which means pursuing obedience and holiness.

It means explicitly saying you have to stop what you're doing. You cannot live in this sin. You cannot embrace this sin. And so pastors don't simply say and preachers don't simply say, here is God's sexual ethic.

Here's what marriage is. We call people rightfully so as the scriptures command us to turn from sins and obedience. There's a debate right now among evangelicals in Canada saying don't, don't concede the illegality of the bill. You know, it may not be used this way. I think if we look at the last two years and if we understand the encroachment of the civil government upon the local church, I think it's clear we see where this is going.

And anyone who says otherwise, I'm trying to be kind. I don't think they're paying attention. I don't think their eyes are fully open as to what's happening.

Naive at best. Andrew DiBartolo joins us today here on the Christian Royal View radio program. He's a teaching elder at Encounter Church in Kingston, Ontario in Canada. He's also working for the Liberty Coalition Canada on some religious and individual rights issues.

We have him linked at our website, thechristianroyalview.org. Andrew, why should this issue be a line in the sand issue with Christians and especially pastors and churches? And what kind of response or what kind of coverage is the Canadian media giving this? What kind of response are you hearing from fellow churches in Canada?

What's the sense of the people there? The truth is that this line should have been drawn a while ago when the state thought that they could tell churches how to worship Christ. Right. So this is just this is just another thing in that similar vein where the state thought that they could be God and they could tell churches, well, you can meet, but you can't sing and you have to cover your faces and you have to be 30 percent capacity. You can't touch anyone. Don't celebrate the Lord's Supper. You know what?

It has to be outside. That's when the line should have been drawn. So many didn't draw the line at that time. And so now is an opportunity for them to actually draw the line. And now is an opportunity for them to realize they missed that boat and they allowed the civil government to encroach upon the autonomy and the authority of the local church.

So now it's a matter of drawing the line because it's obviously not going to stop here. The liberal government has already promised that it is going to remove the charitable status of what they call anti-abortion organizations. So in their reelection platform for 2021, this was a promise that they made protecting women's reproductive rights, right?

A euphemism for murdering babies. They said that any organization, for example, pregnancy care centers that promote anti-abortion and that don't really allow women to all the opportunities that they would have for their quote unquote health care will have their charitable status removed. The Criminal Code in Canada has already been amended with new hate speech laws protecting homosexuals and transgender people as a protected class and criminalizing anyone who would speak against it in various settings. And so this has been such an overt attack on the scriptures that pastors and elders, and this is where the line is, pastors and elders have to decide whether Christ will reign in their churches or if they're going to hand their churches over to Caesar and become state churches. Because if you let the civil government dictate not only how and when you can worship, but now what you are and are not allowed to say under threat of punishment and imprisonment, you're basically a state church. And so the line is God alone defines marriage and sexuality.

He has designed creational norms and if churches are not going to proclaim the truth of God's word and God's design, then respectfully they might as well close their doors or give the keys to the civil government because that's what they've done. So it doesn't end here and it's not going to end here and so the line has to be drawn because there's just going to be more and more encroachment as every day and month and year passes and so we need to stop giving up the line and stand firm now and push back against this darkness. That is so well said. The Christian Worldview with David Wheaton returns in just a moment. The original stalwart souls who created a colony in the howling New England winter just so they can worship according to the dictates of conscience had far more influence on world history than they could have ever imagined.

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Andrew DiBartolo joins us today here on The Christian Worldview, a Canadian pastor. And follow up with the part B of that question is what has been the response as you've reached out to other churches in Canada and what has been the media coverage about this? Well, I'll start with the media coverage first and the answer is zero or negative. Our media system here in Canada and the big media outlets, the legacy media, the traditional media is government funded and government subsidized.

And so when you're receiving your funding from the same civil government that is not only putting these laws into place, but is also heavy handed with its restrictions and its mandates, you're going to get a unanimous messaging coming out. And so there's been no favorable media coverage, so you would expect the same kind of language that we are transphobic, that we are homophobic, that we are archaic, that we actually support the kind of conversion therapy that I mentioned before that no one would actually support, that we're for electroshock therapy and we're for denial therapy and denial measures. And so that's the media coverage we get, but it's also kind of silent. No one is going to blow a whistle on this.

No one's going to draw attention to this. So that's what media is like here in Canada and we really have relied primarily on faithful brothers and churches and media, alternative media and kind of even some main media sources in the States to shine a light on it. But really the only organization that is loudly blowing a whistle on what's happening here would be the Liberty Coalition. And so not just with the initiative that we're doing on the 16th, but through podcasts and interviews and articles being released and statements, we are trying to showcase what's going on here because there's really no coverage from other churches, organizations. Unfortunately, as we've seen in the last two years, that by and large, all denominations, large kind of Christian fellowships, parachurch organizations have all totally been compliant with mandates and restrictions. So that's forcing their people to be vaccinated before they can come to work.

The Salvation Army here in Canada wouldn't allow people to man the kettles like ringing the bells, collecting money unless they were fully vaccinated. So there's been total buy in from Big Eva here and the broader evangelical mainline churches in Canada. So naturally, they're also going to look upon what we're doing with this favor and they're going to say things like we have a persecution complex or, as you mentioned, it's really not going to come against counseling and preaching. And so lots of benefit of the doubt for the civil government and really no grace shown to faithful brothers who have stood up at great cost to them already.

Some have already spent some time in jail and have already had to pay huge fines. And so we are definitely working against the media, big evangelical industrial complex here in Canada. We are featuring this program today to not only inform you of what's going on, but for you to pray for these brothers in Canada who are intent on preaching the full counsel of the word of God without government restriction.

And we're going to have the boldness to do that this weekend here in Canada. We're going to talk about that in a second. Now, I want to give one more typical criticism you're going to receive, Andrew, is that, well, quote, Christians make such a big deal out of homosexuality and transgenderism, but they overlook the adultery, the pornography, the premarital sex that takes place in their churches. How do you respond to that and why is there a difference between these issues of homosexuality and transgenderism and other issues that the church kind of tends to unfortunately wink at to a certain degree?

I would agree with you that to our shame, many churches, many pastors for a number of reasons have neglected certain sins, haven't been as diligent in calling people to repent of what Jerry Bridges might call respectable sins or, as you said, kind of just give a wink at it. The reality is that all sexual sin is evil. And Paul is clear in 1 Corinthians 6 that there's something unique about sexual sin in the way that it's a sin against your own body. Now, you know, other sins like self-harm and addiction to drugs or alcohol is also a sin against your body, but there's something unique about sexual sin in general as being against your own body, the effect that it has on a person physically, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically. And so as such, the church must call out and call all people to repent of sexual sins.

And I would agree with some of the criticism that we have been negligent of this in the past. Nevertheless, even with sexual sins, there are some of them that accord with nature and those that do not. So I don't know if your listeners would be familiar with Robert Gagnon.

He's at Houston Baptist Theological Seminary. He is probably the most prolific writer, theologian, researcher, as it has to do with issues of homosexuality and sexuality in general. And as he clearly points out, a man who lusts after a woman who's not his wife, or even if he fornicates with her, at its core, the desire for a man to be with a woman and express that desire in sexual union is normative and right. Now, it's distorted because it's not his wife, but at its core, a man who desires to be with a woman and to express that desire in sexual union is according to God's design. The difference when we deal with the sins of transgenderism and homosexuality is that these defy creational norms. So they're not just a distorted sexual view. They are an affront to God's design, right? They go against nature.

That's one of the differences. The other difference is, as Paul clearly points out in Romans 1, that a culture that rejects God, that worships a creation rather than the creator, they're handed over to a great wickedness. But Paul teaches that perverting God's sexual norms, right, men exchanging natural relations with women, instead of having them with men and women exchanging the natural relations with men and then having them with other women, Paul calls that out not as just merely one of many sins, but he's specific in Romans 1 in saying that this is the result of God handing the person over, right?

And so it is so against nature. It is so much an attack on the gospel that this is what happens when God takes his hands off the reins and lets people and cultures free fall. So while all sexual sin is evil, and the church has been negligent in many ways at calling people to repent of these sexual sins, the unavoidable reality that we get from the scriptures all the way back from the garden and from Paul's unpacking in Romans 1 is that these particular sins, which are perversion of the creational norm, which are an attack on God's design for human sexuality, are distinct, and they are the evidence that God has handed a culture over, not just one sin among other sins. And so I know it's a very controversial issue and a very controversial way, and I know that many professing Christians would disagree with this, but I think they have to square it away with the clear testimony of the scriptures with cultural norms and even with the way Paul describes this handing over and its consequences. Andrew, I just think you gave one of the most biblical answers I've ever heard to that question.

So I think you're right squarely over scripture, founded on scripture, to give the answer you just gave. Andrew DiBartolo with us today here on the Christian worldview radio program, a pastor in Canada, talking about this new law that just went into effect in Canada, C4, that is banning so-called conversion therapy, which is made intentionally broad to criminalize Christians. Jumping off that answer you just gave about the difference of homosexuality and transgenderism versus other sexual sins, why do you think these issues of homosexuality and transgenderism, the movement behind it, the advocates for it, why have they been so effective at silencing, marginalizing, and even criminalizing Christians? I mean, you don't see people who are in favor of adultery or pornography or extramarital heterosexual sex forming organizations to silence Christians from speaking out against their particular sins.

Why the difference with homosexuality and transgenderism? I think part of the difference has to do with kind of how I answered the last question, that when you reach this point in culture, where the culture has so been handed over to all sorts of perversions, that it now exchanges God's natural design for human sexuality and replaces it with all sorts of distortions. I mean, we see a culture that's in freefall. We see a culture that has been so abandoned to its own sin that has thrown off any of the good boundaries or any of the good structure that holds it together. David Shaffer talked about this a lot in his book, The Great Evangelical Disaster, that when a culture shakes itself free of what it perceives to be the shackles of biblical Christianity or Christian practices or principles, it freefalls into chaos. And when it does so, a totalitarianism is going to creep up because a culture that's in freefall that's surrounded by chaos and calamity needs something to hold it together.

Right. It's scary in this unknown, chaotic sense. And so a totalitarianism, Shaffer said, will rise up and the people will embrace it and embrace it because it's comfortable, because it's safe. And so you have a culture handed over that's in opposition to God's creational norms.

You have a totalitarian bent that is now creeping up that provides a measure of stability and control and safety for people. I would say, yes, perhaps the push hasn't been as strong with regards to certain sexual sins, but I think that play has been in effect for many years. And so the reality is it's been generations of the erosion of God's law and the erosion of a biblical sexual ethic. And so I think one of the reasons why it's effective now and obviously it would have been effective 50 years ago is because our culture has made sexual immorality and deviance normative. So we're having to work against an entire social climate that views us as bigots and cavemen and having these very archaic, antiquated beliefs and practices. And so the social pressure to conform, to be well liked, as we saw many pastors talk about in the last two years, to maintain their witness right to love their neighbor and to hold on to all their social capital.

That cripples many people. The second reason why is these issues have clearly been politicized. This is clearly a political issue. No one wants to be canceled or hated by people. No one wants to be called the names, which the reality is will cost you your job. I mean, if there's an accusation that you've said something or done something in certain workplaces, you get the call from HR, you're done. And so cancel culture is very real and people's lives are being ruined by this.

And so it's difficult to speak up against the political correctness monster. I think there's a third reason, and this is a deeply spiritual reason that I think is really what's driving underneath it. The gods of self and sexual expression have enslaved many people. And we know what happens. We know how people respond when their gods are attacked. When you speak against their gods, when you tell them that your god is a false god, your god has no power at all, my god is greater than your god. We know how people respond. They respond with anger and violence.

They become incredibly defensive. And so that's what we're seeing here. We're seeing people's gods that they hold so tightly. Now their gods are wanting to flex on other gods. And what they're saying is, no, our god of self, of sexual expression, of worshipping the creation rather than the creator, this god will now reign supreme. So your god must bow to our god. And we're saying what the church has said for 2,000 years, there is no lord but Christ.

There is no god, there is no king but Christ. And so that's what's driving this conflict. The Christian Worldview with David Wheaton returns in just a moment. Recent guest Cal Beissner defines economics as moral philosophy applied to marketplace relationships. So it makes sense that as our nation's judgment of what is right and wrong has moved away from biblical morality, our economic policies have gone the same wrong direction. So what is the Christian Worldview on economics? Cal Beissner has written an insightful 56-page softcover booklet titled Biblical Foundations for Economics that shows how economic principles and policies need to be based on the Bible to achieve the greatest human flourishing. For a limited time, we are offering Biblical Foundations for Economics for a donation of any amount to the Christian Worldview. To order, go to thechristianworldview.org or call 1-888-646-2233 or write to Box 401 Excelsior, Minnesota 55331.

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Short takes are also available and be sure to share with others. Now, back to today's program with host David Wheaton. Andrew DiBartolo joins us today here on The Christian Worldview talking about this new law in Canada that basically, as he's been mentioning, criminalizes what God's Word says about sex and gender. Now, from what you've been going through in Canada over the last couple years with COVID, the lockdowns, the church shutdowns, the arrests of pastors and so forth, how do you think the government is going to respond after Sunday when pastors like you and some others in Canada preach on a biblical view of sexual morality?

It's difficult to know for sure. One thing that I would say is I don't believe that there's the sort of manpower, whether it's in bureaucratic bodies or even various municipal or provincial police forces to now scour the Internet and find every church. So, for example, I don't think every church in Kingston is going to have their websites visited by some sort of online Bill C-4 anti-discrimination task force to make sure that what they're preaching on is faithful. I think that that's kind of manpower that we don't have.

So I think this is what it will look like. Bigger churches with platforms, especially ones that have already faced fines and bad media coverage. So churches that have been defiant, that have been outspoken, that have a platform, that have a voice, they're automatically going to be on the radar because they are on the radar. And so I think that these bigger churches might have certain sermons looked at or scrutinized.

It might be that. I think, however, what's going to happen or the big play, and this I think was also the big play with COVID issues, is you're not going to have municipal and federal authorities going to every single church, making sure that they're doing what they're doing. I think that the civil government relies on its very compliant populace to rat people out.

I think that's really what we're going to see. You will have people who will report on churches who will say, this church said this, whether it's angry people who are going to go to websites or who will show up to churches on Sunday morning, anticipating these things will be said, and then they'll begin to report them. You may also have people, and we're quite convinced of this, people who will make it their job to try to infiltrate churches, pretend to be friendlies, build relationships, gain trust, and then approach the pastor about certain desires. They have or certain feelings they have that don't comport with nature and then use that as a pretext to entrap pastors.

We can definitely see that happening. And so I think as with COVID measures and the mandates and the restrictions, I think that the civil government is relying on people and they will trust that people will report on rule breakers, that people will report on those who aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing. And they will use, again, a very compliant and in many ways, a very blindly trusting population to do the dirty work for them because they just don't have the resources to scour churches and websites or the time in a smaller church of 30 people. You have a faithful pastor who's going to preach on biblical sexuality. They're not thinking about going after him.

He's a small fish. They want to make an example of the bigger churches and the more well-known ones. And so they'll be the big targets first, and then they're going to rely on people doing their dirty work for them as they have for the last two years. Well, that really sounds like a communistic, horrible situation when you have citizens turning in one another to the government.

But what you're describing sounds very plausible to me. And so we will look to see what the response is. Again, Andrew DiBartolo joins us today on the Christian Real View.

Just a couple more questions for you. Let's back up one step before this, Bill. You mentioned earlier just about all the COVID lockdowns. The church's pastor, James Coates, went to prison over it.

I think he's over in Edmonton, Alberta. I think Tim Stevens, a Baptist pastor there, was arrested as well. And I read about just the arrest of Tim Stevens on one of the newspapers in Canada. And I read down into the comments and literally, I think every single comment was against him. Almost every single one. Just what's the matter with these people? They're okay with spreading sickness.

It was just almost universally negative. How do you explain with this COVID-19 virus going around and just the discrepancies of over 99% of people who get it survive it? The vaccine, the so-called vaccine, is largely ineffective.

There's lots of adverse reactions to it. The church is called to gather in person. These churches aren't experiencing their meeting despite the government lockdowns.

People aren't dropping dead every week after the services from COVID. It's so ludicrous just on the face of it. And yet, the vast majority of the population complies and then criticizes these churches in Canada, the small percentage of churches that are going to obey God over men. How do you explain that dynamic? That is a great question and it is one that we have been wrestling with.

I mean, personally. So, men across the country personally have been wrestling with how it is that this kind of response has come from many, including many professing Christians and including many Christian organizations. And so, I'll just give one example of one that I heard that was astounding to me. The Christian Missionary Alliance Church here in Canada, one of the largest churches in the denomination is in Alberta.

It's in the province of Alberta. And one of the pastors was interviewed. It was a non-Christian media organization, just some regular newspaper, was interviewed. And in response to what happened with James Coates and his ilk, so other men who took a similar approach, this man said that the actions of James Coates were not only dishonoring to Christ, but were bringing reproach upon the gospel. So, this man, who's a professing brother, said of another brother to a pagan that he was bringing reproach upon the gospel. And so, your question is a really good one because that seems to be ridiculous.

These are supposed to be allies and they're functioning as enemies. And there's a couple reasons why we see this and why this has come about, specifically in the church or specifically among professing believers, pastors, elders, churches. I think that we have valued so much the acceptance of the culture, of ingratiating ourselves to the culture, of being thought of as winsome and likable, of making sure that we don't do anything to tar our witness, that we win them over with our love, that terrible euphemism, preach Christ and use words if necessary, as if there's any other way to preach Christ than by using words. And we valued this so much that anything to maintain our witness, anything to give good PR, anything to be well thought of by the culture because that's how we win them is what drives people to do what they do. And so, if you have men and pastors who are standing up and who are saying, my job is not to win over the culture, my job is to be faithful to Christ. It's a costly obedience. The gospel is not a popular message. Christ's own commitment to the gospel and obedience to the Father is what led to his crucifixion as being a political insurrectionist and setting himself up as another Caesar.

These are the charges brought against him. This is what we're doing. Our job is not to win over the culture. No one gets saved because we're living a really, really good Christian life and everyone thinks we're loving and kind and winsome. So I think within the church, that's part of the response is we've grown up in a culture for generations now, that we have to be a certain way and win over the culture.

And so anything, any kind of masculinity, for example, that is bold or courageous or speaks out is toxic and not very winsome. So that's within the church. Outside of the church, I think the effectiveness of the messaging, right, it has been unanimous in-concert messaging from government officials, health bureaucrats, legacy media. It's all been this one message. And so that message, in part, has been to, quote unquote, other or ostracize the unvaccinated or the anti-vaxxers or the anti-maskers or the anti-science people. And so by creating this group of people who are now responsible for where we are, these people become the enemies. And what we're being told, and I mean, this was the case with you as well, just recently I read that Joe Biden, I think it was the State of the Union, said that everyone who isn't vaccinated enjoy a holiday with death and suffering and disease.

He actually said that to your country. What you're doing is you're saying that there are a group of people who are responsible for our calamity, right? Maybe they didn't bring the virus, but they're the ones who are responsible for the continuing of this problem because they won't get the shot, because they won't put on a mask, because they won't follow the rules. And so if you can convince a sizable portion of the population that this group of people are the reasons why you can't go to work or why you can't see your grandmother or why you can't enjoy your vacation or why your husband has turned to the bottle in depression and why he's now taking it out on your kids, if it's the fault of this group of people, the anti-science, anti-mask, anti-vax people, then you will become angry.

They're the object of your anxiety, your fear, your worry. And so you're going to turn on them because they're the ones that are ultimately making your life miserable. And so if they would just comply, everything could go back to normal. And if they're not going to comply, then we need to force them to comply. I mean, this is a – it's deeply spiritual, it's deeply psychological, what has been done to people in terms of how they view this, quote-unquote, other group who is now responsible for their calamity and the fact that this isn't over yet.

Obviously, I think there's a bleeding of those two together. I think some of that also bleeds into the church and among professing Christians. But I see distinctly in the church, here are some reasons, and then in the broader culture, this is why people are so angry and with such vitriol, they can speak against men who simply want to call their church to gather to worship and who won't bow to obscene and anti-scientific mandates and restrictions.

And this is why facts don't matter, because the delusion is so deep, you can bring out all the facts of the stats about adverse reactions and how ineffective the vaccine, the so-called vaccine is, and the ineffectiveness of a cloth mask to transmit the virus and so forth, and it doesn't matter because the delusion is so – you might as well be speaking a different language. What would you like Christians listening in America today, and really around the world, there's a podcasting audience to this program outside this country, what would you like to say to them, encourage them to do at this particular time, as they think about pastors and Christians in Canada and the crosshairs that are on them right now? The first thing I would say is, right now, our initiative, what the Liberty Coalition wants to do in encouraging pastors across this country to faithfully preach on God's design for marriage and a biblical sexual ethic comes at a cost to us. It doesn't right now, and I want to emphasize the right now, come at a large cost to our brothers to the south, but that's not going to be the case forever.

I think that once your version, if you will, or a similar piece of legislation known as the Equality Act, once that works its way through and becomes law in your country, you're going to be in the same position as we are. The analogy that I've given before is we're both heading towards the same cliff. We're going much faster than you are. In fact, we might already be off the cliff, so that's our situation here.

You guys are still driving towards the cliff, you're just going at a slower pace. If people in the United States think this will never come to us, I'm sure those are the same people who thought two years ago, we would never close our church because of the flu. Time has a way, the slow encroaching upon liberties and the slow encroachment upon rights happens slow for a reason. Part of why we want to call our American brothers to be faithful and to join us in this is because this is coming for you guys as well. It's just going to happen a little bit slower, it'll differ from state to state.

You have a different structure of governance with the states having a relatively higher autonomy than provinces do here, but it's coming there. Being ready, standing firm, making those decisions now, drawing those lines now, prepares you. If your attitude is, I'll wait until it comes upon me before I determine what I'm going to do, you're almost certainly going to fail and you're almost certainly going to comply. We want to encourage our brothers, be strong now, be faithful now, look at our example, understand that this is coming for you, make those decisions, honor Christ, obey Christ, pay the great cost that comes from obedience. That would be the first thing, a warning and a calling to be aware that we're just ahead of you, but you're headed towards the same cliff. The second thing would be everything in your power, and this is why we reached out to Pastor John, this is why I reached out to Tom Askel, this is why we reached out to a number of different churches and organizations in the United States who have platforms to shine a light on it. Share articles about what's going on, go to LibertyCoalitionCanada.com, share our initiative, share what's happening with not just this bill, but with what our government's doing, shine a light.

We get no favorable coverage here, and the truth is Canadians consume so much American media, and so American media outlets, American news organizations, American radio stations, everyone who highlights this and shares it and blasts it out, Canadians consume that, and so it's a benefit to us as well for you to highlight it, to shine a light on it, to rally the troops, to embolden people, to obey, that would be another thing. And third, I would say, be praying for us. There are a number of men in this country who have already served time in prison because of their faithfulness to Christ and because of their faithfulness to being under shepherds to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Tremendous fines await people if we don't win any court battles, which it doesn't look like we're going to. And so there's a big cost for us, and so we want to be faithful, we want to obey Christ, we want to be bold in our calling. And so be praying for us, be praying for men in churches that are taking the stand that will declare that God alone gets to define what marriage and sexuality are. That's what I would tell our listeners, to be ready to anticipate it's coming your way, to shine a light so that people can see what's going on here, so that we can be encouraged and more and more awakened to the reality of it, and to be praying for us, because this is, I'm sure for many, a stressful week anticipating and not knowing who's going to show up on Sunday.

If a new, for example, if a new person comes into your church on Sunday morning, I don't think there's going to be a pastor who's committed themselves to this initiative, who won't at least have the thought, is this person here specifically to hear what I'm going to say and to report me, or for another reason. And so we're going to be wrestling with that this week. So be praying for us. Yeah, Andrew, never met you in person, but I highly respect you as a brother in Christ for your courage, for the way you can articulate these really stressful and really, I think, predictable issues when both of our societies have been given over to a rejection of God in his word.

And so we thank you for bringing this to light, what's going on in Canada. We most certainly will pray for you. We support you 100%. And we just wish all of God's best and grace and courage and boldness to you this weekend and in the coming months in Canada as you stand strong in him. Thank you, David. We're very grateful, personally grateful for the highlighting of this, the support, the prayers. And I know I speak on behalf of other men in this country, and I speak on behalf of the Liberty Coalition as well, that we are, we're tremendously thankful for every opportunity we have to discuss and shine a light on this and to be covered by the prayers of faithful brothers in the United States.

So again, thank you for having me on. We are out of time for today, but let's remember the world may be predictably changing, but Jesus Christ and his word are the same yesterday and today and forever. Pray for these pastors in Canada. And until next time, think biblically, live accordingly, and stand firm.

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